All language subtitles for The.Line.King.the.Al.Hirschfeld.Story.1996.1080p.WEBRip.x265-RARBG

[ Indistinct chatter ]

WOMAN: Have you ever been
drawn by Al Hirschfeld,

- the caricaturist?
-MAN: No, I have not.

WOMAN: I define how I look
by his drawings.

WOMAN: I've been to Sardi's.
Does that count?

WOMAN: And here you are
looking wonderful, I must say.

MAN:
And he owes me a meal.

WOMAN: Yes, he does.

[ Orchestra warming up ]

[ Conducting baton tapping ]

MAN: The artist Paul Klee
said that a line

is a dot out for a walk,

and without Hirschfeld,
it's out for a dance.

It's out for a jump.
It's out for a frolic,

and you just watch the line,

watch it sometimes,
you'll see it curlicue around,

just like music.

[ Music playing ]

ROBERT GOULET:
He's drawn me about 10 times.

We have about five
Al Hirschfelds in our home.

ROBERT LOGGIA: Yes,
he did in Toys In The Attic

and Boom Boom Room.

I did Showboata long time ago,

and he had this wonderful
drawing of me dancing.

When I picked up my copy
of the New York Times,

and I see your work in it,

it's home to me.

I have two of the most
wonderful drawings

of yours, that I treasure.

Yes, I have a wonderful
caricature by Al Hirschfeld,

yes.

And every Sunday,
I counted Ninas.

I wanted to see how many times
he wrote Nina,

and I'd try to find
this marvel of mystery,

of where has he signed "Nina,"

"Nina, Nina."

[ Music playing ]

MAN: Hirschfeld represents
the history of entertainment

in this country,

really, for the entire century.

I don't know if anybody
who's chronicled it better.

LIZA: Thank you.

In the theater, a playwright
can create a character

with a few brilliant lines.

The theater has been blessed

by the presence
of a great artist

who can create
a single brilliant line

and tell you everything
about a character.

He's been doing so
for close to 70 years.

One of the highest honors
a member of our profession

can achieve
is to be immortalized

with a stroke of the pen
by this master of portraiture.

Just about every show
that ever came to Broadway

has benefitted
from his inspired drawings.

The Tony Awards
joins his millions of fans

in wishing him
such a happy birthday,

his 90th birthday this month.

Mr. Hirschfeld,
will you stand up.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Al Hirschfeld.

[ Applause ]

JULES: The only glamour left
in the theater

is what Al Hirschfeld,
brings to it

and he is to what he does

what Astaire was to what he did.

Al has the same effortlessness,

the same grace,

the same wit,

and that
lighter-than-air quality.

KATHARINE: He certainly
really does it well,

so he's great fun.

I mean,
looking at his stuff is just--

it's a treat.

Hilarious,
me playing the piano,

tells the whole story...
terrifying.

[ Laughing ]

FLORENCE: When he went to see
a show, he kept a little pad

in his pocket and made sketches in his pocket

of what he was later
going to do

on a bigger scale.

CAROL:
He's captured the performance

and the red blood corpuscles

going around--
that go around,

the adrenaline
that's shooting off,

and the electricity --
he captures it,

right there on paper.

It's the magic of the theater.

STEFAN: Al is considered one
of the very high art form,

and it's a pity that he has
to be known as a caricaturist,

but that's the only word
for what he does.

The word itself

comes from
an Italian word, caricatura,

which means
"to stuff a sausage".

And what that has to do
with anything,

I don't know.

MAN: There's Al Hirschfeld,
and then there are

the other caricatures.

It's like Sondheim

writes musicals,
and there's Sondheim musicals,

and then there's
everybody else's musical.

I mean, he does a different
kind of art form.

[ Car honking ]

PHILIP: The other interesting
thing about Al

is his driving.

He's in touch with some gods

that the rest of us
don't know anything about.

MARIA: When Al drives a car,

everybody else

counts their rosaries
or their beads

or says, "Have 'I
made out my will?"

AL: Slower or keep it going?

MAN: Yeah, a little slower.

MARIA: Most of the time,
they don't dare say

that they're scared to death.

WOMAN: Okay, just pull in here.

You're too close
to the white car.

AL: You're gonna get
your car hit.

-WOMAN: No, stop, stop, stop.
-MARIA: Nothing ever happens.

Dear God, hear me,
nothing ever happens.

MAN: Al Hirschfeld
was aisle-struck early on.

Russel Crouse was a playwright

with Howard Lindsay
who did a number of hits.

The one most memorable
isLife with Father,

and he met Al Hirschfeld

early on when Hirschfeld was
breaking in as a caricaturist.

He described him as a person

who had had a black beard

and very young eyes,
and it reminded him of a--

of a little boy looking over
a well-trimmed hedge.

And the hedge has gotten white,

but the little boy
is still looking over it.

AL: Well, I've drawn ever since
I could hold a pencil.

Actually, all kids draw.

I just never stopped.

[ Piano playing ]

I was the youngest
of three brothers,

born in 1903,

oddly on the longest day
of the year.

June the 21st.

My oldest brother
was called Al.

I don't know why
we were both called Al,

but we both were.

I was Albert,
and he was Alexander.

It complicated our bank
accounts as we grew older.

Al was a gifted pianist, and he hated the piano.

Never wanted to play the piano,

and he ran away from home
and became a salesman.

He went on the road
selling peanuts.

My other brother,
who I was much closer to,

Milton, he died
during the flu epidemic

in the first World War.

I was of that generation
that missed both wars, actually.

It was a very odd thing,
but people of my age

were too young
for the first World War

and too old for the second
World War.

When my parents met,
they didn't speak

each other's language.

My father had come to St. Louis

from Albany, New York,

where his father was a tailor.

Pop spoke only English.

My mother who arrived
in St. Louis from Russia

spoke only Russian and Yiddish.

I guess love or affection
conquers all.

I attribute my longevity
to my parents.

Pop lived to be 93.

Mom to 91.

DOLLY: Al grew up
with this fierce woman,

fierce for life

and the knowledge

that she had
a very talented son.

AL: As a kid in St. Louis,

there was an artist there,

and he used
to take me out drawing

on the weekends,

and he convinced my parents

to come to New York, that there was no future for me

in St. Louis, and so my mother,

who ran the family, really,

picked us all up
and brought us to New York.

Well, we arrived in New York,
when I was about 12,

and we arrived at Penn Station

and got on the Amsterdam Avenue street car

and went to the
end of the line,

and we started walking down
through mostly farmland...

It was all apple orchards
up there,

and we got to as far
as about 183rd Street,

and there was
a little house there,

and my mother went in

and then inquired
about an apartment,

and we rented
the top floor of this house

for four dollars a month.

Seems ridiculous,
but my father never worked.

My mother worked.

And my father took care
of the kids.

He was marvelous with kids.

He was the umpire
of the ball game,

and that sort of thing.

My father was an original.

He started the trotting races
on the Harlem River Drive.

In his later years,
he invented the phrase

"senior citizen."

My mother was the breadwinner
in our family.

She worked in
department stores,

had a candy store in St. Louis.

She was the one
who supported us.

[ Music playing ]

AL: When I was about 14,

my mother took me
to see a musical comedy

called "Hijinks"
at the Maxine Elliott theater,

and that was
my first experience

in the theater,
and I was enchanted with it.

It just transported me
to another world.

And I had discovered
vaudeville.

I became a buff at vaudeville,

went every Monday afternoon
to the Palace theater.

Signs of a misspent youth.

MAN: From coast to coast
stretched an endless chain

of vaudeville houses,
forever prosperous.

Offering a lifetime
of bookings to popular acts.

AL: You might say
that I was stage-struck.

I was mesmerized
by the stage.

I found myself
sitting out in front

performing in my chair.

Actually doing a visual
response to what I was seeing.

[ Music playing ]

AL: Almost everybody
had to be in vaudeville.

That was their training.

Between burlesque
and vaudeville,

all the comics came out
of there, you know.

W.C. Fields,

Ed Wynn,

Marx Brothers.

[ Music playing ]

-MAN: Hey, hey.
-AL: Weber and Fields.

MAN: Hey, buddy, stop,
don't you-- don't lay it down.

You put the oyster
in the milk.

And you drown the oyster.

No, you don't drown the oyster.

Hey, what is that you got there?

Why, that's a newspaper.

I thought it
was wrapping paper.

That's the evening news.

It appears like a post.

AL: There was a thing
called Scandinavia.

I doubt if that rings a bell
at all.

It was done in a kind
of a Swedish accent, you know.

♪ Scandinavia♪

♪ I love you♪

♪ I thank you,
fine Swedish gal♪

♪ You know for you I would die♪

♪ But never ask me to try♪

♪ Those Swedish pastry
of yours♪

♪ Because they think somehow♪

♪ I don't wanna die now♪

♪ Oh, Scandinavia♪

♪ As a cook...
afraid♪

♪ You'll never do♪

♪ But when you sing
those songs♪

♪ You'll make those music
sing those songs♪

♪ And make those music♪

♪ Scandinavia♪

♪ I love you♪

He didn't really begin
as a caricaturist.

He began as a sculptor.

I don't know if you have seen
his two first efforts

when he was 14 and 17.

Well, I started out actually -- I wanted to be a sculptor.

Sculpture is really a drawing that you fall over in the dark,

but it's a drawing, it's
a three-dimensional drawing.

Practically, all the mediums
I worked in,

watercolor and oil

and then lithography

and etching...

I went
to the National Academy of Art

at night,
and the Art Students League.

But how to make a living
was very difficult.

But I finally got a job,

quite by accident,
like all things in life,

at Goldwyn Pictures,

Howard Dietz was
the advertising manager there.

And I got a job there
at four dollars a week

in the art department.

I worked at Metro Pictures

before it became
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

and First National
before it became Warner Bros.

At Metro,
I did all the comedians,

Charley Chase,

Laurel and Hardy,

Buster Keaton,

and Charlie Chaplin

for Pathé Pictures.

It's hard to believe

but I was only 18
or 19 years old

when I became art director

of Selznick Pictures.

DANIEL: He worked for my
grandfather, L.J. Selznick

in 1916, 1917.

It was his first job in New York

when my grandfather Selznick

was producing
silent pictures.

AL: And the old man Selznick

and his son David

suggested that I could take
over the art department,

which I did.

And I opened a separate place
on 53rd Street.

I had a studio,
and I hired all of the artists

that were on the payroll
at Selznick.

And after about two months, I
was getting trade acceptances,

and they went bankrupt.

And I found myself
owing an awful lot of money.

I was then about 19,

so I took a job again
at Warner Brothers

and paid off all my debts.

And once I had finished that,

that was the changing point
in my life, really,

because at that point,
my uncle came to New York.

And he was very proud
of the fact

that I paid off all my debts,
and so on.

He said, "How would you like
you go to Europe?"

[ Music playing ]

AL: So, I said,
"Well, I'd love to go,

but I've never thought
about it."

So, he gave me $500,

and I bought a passage
on the maiden voyage

of the SS De Grasse.

It was a French liner.

One-cabin ship,

and it was $65.

[ Music playing ]

AL: That whole romantic idea
of Paris in the '20s

attracted most of the writers
and painters at the time.

I rented a studio
with two other fellows.

It was $33 apiece.

So, that was
a hundred dollars a year.

We had running water
but no hot water.

So, we all grew a beard

because it was impossible
to shave.

It's so long ago, it never
occurred to me to shave since.

Although on one occasion,
I must say,

that I shaved off
half of my beard

on one side and half my mustache
on the other

and came around the dome,

thinking this would
startle everybody,

and nobody noticed in the end.

I was the tap dancer
and played the ukulele

in Zelli's,
which was a night club

on the Right Bank.

Well, it was a wonderful time
to be alive

and around in Paris.

Everybody was painting
the great picture

and writing
the great American novel.

There was Hemingway,

Dos Passos, Picasso,
Maurice Chevalier.

MAN: [ Singing in French ]

AL: But the great toast
of Paris in those years

was Josephine Baker.

[ Singing in French ]

MAN: Now we're on our way
to the world-famous...

-AL: I came back to the States.
-MAN: ...Madison Square Garden

- for the big benefit...
-AL: One evening in 1926,

I went to the theater

and Sacha Guitry
and Yvonne Printemps

were performing.

And during the show,
I made some sketches

on the playbill,

drawings, were very rough,

and Dick Maney,

the press agent
who accompanied me

looked at it and said,

"Look, why don't you put that
on a clean piece of paper

and let me try and sell it
to one of the newspapers?

I did, and he placed it
in the Tribune.

And the following week,

the Tribune called
and asked me to do a drawing.

That's how it started.

And that was it.

It never occurred to me

that I'd be making
a living at it.

WOMAN: ♪ Come on near♪

♪ Come on near♪

♪ It's the best band
in the land♪

♪ They can play a bugle♪

♪ Like you never heard before♪

♪ They'll come at you
if you wanna go to war♪

♪ They're just --
come on board...♪

PAULA: Al didn't have to lock
himself up

in a room
to do these drawings.

He was able to work
with swarms of people around.

And he was using
the ubiquitous barber chair.

AL: It's the last functional
chair made, I think.

It goes up and down,
becomes a chaise lounge,

it turns around.

You have to fight to work
in a chair like this.

I worked on--
originally onThe Tribune

and thenThe Old World,

and theTelegram Telegraph,

andBrooklyn Eagle.

I remember the Brooklyn Eagle
was $7.50 a column.

And they let me do whatever

I wanted to do
on that first page.

And I devised a Machiavellian
scheme for paying the room rent

by devising a...
kind of a pie-shaped thing.

It came to a point at one end

and then stretched out
for eight columns.

So, that came to, we'll say $40,
you see, for the eight columns.

And then I have another banner

high on that side coming to a point on this side.

And I remember Dick Maney

said he's not gonna pay
for those last three columns

because there's nothing
in there.

It's just an empty space.

This went on for years.

I remember doing a drawing
of Harry Kurnitz's play.

And it was a nude.

TheTimes
wouldn't run it

unless I put
a brassiere on her.

So, I put a brassiere on it,

and it ran inThe Times
with a brassiere,

and it ran inThe Tribune
without it.

And I think
a lot of publications,

I thinkLife Magazine
picked it up,

and had had, I think,
called it "All the Nudes

That's Fit to Print."

WOMAN: ♪ Use...♪

♪ Your imagination♪

♪ Just take this motto
for your theme♪

♪ And soon every night♪

♪ Will be crowded with delight♪

♪ And every day♪

♪ Will be a dream♪

[ Music playing ]

AL: I was very interested
in politics,

as a young man.

And I think every young person
should be.

And I went to the Soviet Union

to cover the theater.

And I stayed there a year.

This was 1927.

And I must say the theater
was marvelous.

[ Music playing ]

AL: In those years,
I was very left.

The only paper that would
publish my political drawings

wasThe New Masses.

And so, I worked for them
for a long time.

I remember doing
a drawing one time

of the parliament
in London bombed.

I had all the members
of parliament in gas masks

and Chamberlain addressing them with peace in our time.

I brought it down to
The Times

when the parliament was bombed.

Thinking it had some news.

Markel, who was
the editor then, said,

"No, it's a communist drawing."

And I know what he meant
by that because it's a--

was a lithograph,

and lithography was taken over

by the communist party
at that time.

The symbols were very odd.

I mean, all the--
all the left-wing artists

working as-- in lithography.

He said, "Why don't you take it
to The New Masses?"

So I said, "Well, okay."

And I took it to The New Masses,

and they used it
in double-spread.

So he said, "I told you,
it's a communist drawing."

So I said, "Okay,
it's a communist drawing."

But, any rate, I decided then
that that's not my field.

I wasn't capable of switching
my viewpoint

as easily as it is
editorially to do.

I like people, and customs, and manners, that kind of thing,

and that's my field,
more or less.

STEPHAN: When Al Hirschfeld
said he didn't have the venom

to be a political cartoonist,

it was not politics alone,

it was also his art form.

I don't think that a person
who has as much affection

as he does for the people
that he draws

could ever be mean,

and most people
think of caricature as mean.

[ Music playing ]

PAULA: He's a social historian,
and always has been,

in the same way
that Noeël Coward was.

And people thought lightly
of his plays,

but then the years go by,

and they're revived
and you say,

"Hey, this fella really knew
what he was looking at."

[ Music playing ]

STEFAN: Just take a look at his
pictures and you'll understand

how much he knows about people.

Often people look like
hunting animals

or hunted animals.

And hunted animals always have
their eyes in the side,

like rabbits,
and hunting animals

always have their eyes
in the front like wolves,

and he understands that.

And take a look at it
sometimes,

you see, particularly
with young women,

they always look
very vulnerable

and have their eyes in the side

because they're being hunted
by men

who always have their eyes
in the front.

And then as they got to be

in their late 20s or early 30s,
and they wanna get married,

their eyes start to move toward
the front, and then they become

the hunting animal,

and he understands that.

[ Music playing ]

AL: Well, after watching
people for 90 years,

you pick up a few things.

[ Music playing ]

AL: In the late '20s,
theNew York Times decided

it wanted first crack
at my drawings.

The editor then, Lester Markel,

didn't like seeing them in competing newspapers.

Mr. Markel said, "Listen, can't we make some sort of a deal?"

And I said very simply, "Easy.

Just cross my palm with silver, and I'm your fella."

So we shook hands on that,

and I've been covering the arts for them ever since.

Well, the times in those years
was very conservative,

and whenever I would do
a drawing

that I thought had some merit,

I was called on the carpet
by Mr. Markel,

and he would say,
"Make it less caricature.

Can't you make people look
a little more attractive?

I mean,
when I go to the theater,

I see beautiful people,

but when I pick up
theTimes on Sunday,

I see a lot of animals
cavorting around."

He said, "Is there anything
we can do about that?"

And I said, "Yes, there is.

You can get somebody else
to do the drawing.

What you want is an eye,
ear, nose and throat man,

you know, to make
these drawings

and copy them academically

and anatomically,
and make them pretty.

I find no wit in that,

and I don't like to do
that kind of thing.

And we would always part

shaking hands,
and he would tell me

that he'd liked my drawings
and so on.

[ Music playing ]

PAULA: I met him and I would--

I think must have
been 35-- 1935,

and I was working
with Orson at the time

and '35, I did "Horse Eats Hat"

and in '36,
we did "Doctor Faustus."

Al was legally married

but separated
from his first wife,

whom I never met.

Her name was Flo Allen,

and she was a chorus girl
in Earl Carroll's Vanities.

I met Al's mother,

whom everyone called "Mom."

Friday was Mom's day,

and she would come down
and make a huge meal,

and a lot of people would come
and eat it,

and that was sacrosanct,
that belonged to her.

Al was not self-revealing,

in the sense of discussing
things a lot.

In the years

when he was starting
his career,

he had made
wonderful watercolors

and lithographs, and nobody
seemed really interested

in any of his work except
the caricatures,

and I think that
that was very hard for him,

but you'd never know it
from Al.

How he feels
is totally his business.

He had his own divining rod
about the world

and the people he liked,

and I remember particularly
George Braidwood McCoy,

I'll never forget it.

And I'm not quite sure
what he did,

but he always
had one night a week

that he slept on Al's couch.

He would check
into my studio,

where he slept
many nights a week.

He had two
or three places like that

that he could cadge in.

During the 1939 World Fair,

he slept in the Royal Scot.

The expression "the real McCoy" is based on this fella.

[ Laughing ]

[ Music playing ]

PAULA:
One of my great experiences

was going up
to the Apollo Theater

within those days

to hear Louis Armstrong.

And I've never heard
Louis Armstrong.

And he had a 14-year old

soloist on the program,

named Ella Fitzgerald.

[ Music playing ]

AL: In 1931,

I went to Tahiti
with my first wife,

Florence Hobby,

whose stage name
was Flo Allen,

and we stayed there
for a couple of months,

and this very
romantic adventure

broke up our marriage.

I had a friend, a caricaturist,

Miguel Covarrubias who was
living in Bali at the time,

and we corresponded
quite often,

and I was telling him

after being in Tahiti
for about two months,

I found it to be terrible.

It was a rum-running port,
corrupt,

horrible place to be, really.

Food was awful
and pimply-faced,

syphilitic natives.

It was unbearable,

and Miguel was writing
back to me,

telling me what a
wonderful place Bali was.

So I said,
"When you leave,

leave the bicycle, and plates,

and everything else, and
I'll make it there somehow."

He did.
He left his bicycle, dishes,

and it was very easy for me

when I arrived
some months later.

[ Music playing ]

AL: Everything that Covarrubias
had told me

came to be true.

The music was sophisticated,

marvelous, gamelan orchestras,

disciplined dancers,

wonderful food.

It was paradise, actually.

[ Music playing ]

PAULA: When he went
to the Far East,

he saw this
unbelievably strong light,

and he understood the line,

the black line.

[ Music playing ]

AL: I have discovered that
I think in line so vividly

that when I paint,
I'm thinking of drawing.

I mean, it's not accidental
that the great graphic artists

come from the Far East --

Japan, China,

they're all graphic artists.

And in those countries, the sun bleaches the color out,

so that leaves
everything in line.

It's all light and shadow,

and the shadow is pure
as black and white.

MAN: I know he admires

the great Japanese
woodblock artists

who were also masters of line,

people like Utamaro.

But Utamaro, for instance,
wasn't really interested

in making portraits of people.

His were kind
of idealized visions

of beautiful women.

I was running out
of money then.

I had-- well, running out.

I didn't have any
when I started.

But I didn't know how
I was gonna get off the island.

I had been there
for about a year,

and Chaplin arrived
with his brother Sydney.

Charlie Chaplin.

And I had drawn him before in his earlier movie for Pathé.

Well, he bought
a lot of watercolors of mine,

which managed to pay my fare
back to the United States.

I don't know how I would've
gotten back without that.

WOMAN:
♪ Nothin' but blue skies♪

♪ From now on♪

Al's strength

came early on
when he went to Bali,

and he found this
floodlight of sun,

and I don't think
he could capture it again

until he came to the theater.

The theater is after--
totally artificial.

I mean, the light comes up
from the klieg lights,

and the footlights,
and the spotlights,

and there's nothing
natural at all.

In fact, he has said to me,
and I say he's said

to other people that nature
is really terrific,

but he wouldn't wanna
live there.

[ Music playing ]

Daumier is--
if you think of him

as sort of the quintessential
Parisian caricaturist

of the 19th century,

was an artist who's primarily
concerned with realism,

social protests,

and I think
that Al Hirschfeld's work,

not as a tool of
social protest,

but his way
of drawing our attention

to the remarkable

and distinctive personalities
of our time

and fixing them
in some highly stylized form,

that enables us

to remember them forever.

You think of Hirschfeld
as being one of the very small

and happy band,

there's David Levine,

there's Ronald Searle
in England,

to some degree Ralph Steadman,
in a much, much darker vein.

There's Covarrubias

in the beginning of the century
of the-- in the '20s and '30s.

I suspect that the kind of key
moment for Hirschfeld

was when he saw Covarrubias'
caricatures forVanity Fair,

and saw the caricature didn't just have to be a kind of crude

knockabout political humor,

but could be something
that was immensely

stylish and advanced.

So I think that Covarrubias
is probably the kind of

the ghost in the machine,

the presiding spirit
of Hirschfeld's work.

AL:
Well, Covarrubias and I had--

at one point,
shared a studio together,

and he was certainly
a great influence on me.

And then later
there was Johnny Held.

He was the first one
to use the thin line,

actually,
he and Laurence Fellows.

Some other artists out there
were Al Frueh, Sam Norkin,

who imitated me.

[ Laughing ]

No.

My work
is not in Sardi's Restaurant.

MAN: Well,
I think Al really comes out

of sort of two sources, one is Aubrey Beardsley.

Aubrey Beardsley
was a great Edwardian artist.

The other, really,
is Max Beerbohm.

Max Beerbohm
was a terrific caricaturist

of the Victorian Era

who lasted well into the '50s.

He used to do things
like "The Old Self

Meets the Young Self",
and he would have H.G. Wells

in his 20s meeting H.G. Wells
in his 60s,

and the young H.G. Wells
would say,

"All gone according to plan,
I see."

You know, and Al would do
the same thing, in a way,

he'll take two people

who look more or less alike

and have them share
the same eye,

or he'll invent a position

for a character to be
in that he or she

was never in, in order to show
his design sense.

[ Music playing ]

[ Singing in foreign language ]

DOLLY: When I met Al,

I said,
"I don't know who did it."

But I saw a wonderful
drawing of Chaplin.

I think it was
in The New Yorker.

"It was in The Times,"
he said.

"And I did it."

Well, we were enchanted
with each other

when we first met, yes.

She was an extremely well-known actress in Europe.

She was a big star in Europe.

[ Music playing ]

AL: She made "Broken Blossoms"
in London,

which was a very popular
movie here.

DOLLY: He came to do
a drawing of me

while I was doing
"Summer Stock."

AL: She was doing a play
called "Her Cardboard Lover."

I went backstage,
which I rarely do.

I met her, and I invited her
to have a coffee.

Dolly and I
decided to get married,

and we were on our way down
to the city hall

to get a license,

and it occurred to me
on the way down,

I said to Dolly,

"I'm not sure
that I am divorced, you know."

She said, "Well, you better find out, you know."

So, we got out of the cab,

I phoned my ex-wife,

and I said,
"Flo, are we divorced?"

And she said, "No."

I said, "Well, I'm on my way
to get a marriage license."

She said, "Well,
better get a divorce first."

So, that was that.

Well, I met Dolly and Al
because we were neighbors.

I have a house,
three houses up from them,

and I always thought of Dolly

as a friend
of my mother's generation,

of my mother's world,

being German,

being a famous, famous
performer in Germany.

Dolly was already a star
long before Dietrich was,

although Dietrich
wouldn't like to admit that.

My mother
never understood Dolly.

But then that's easy
to understand.

Dietrich never could understand good people.

Dolly fulfilled the function
that great wives sometimes do

with their husbands.

She made it possible for him
to concentrate

entirely on what he was doing

all day long
in that barber's chair

that he worked
in upstairs and had--

had nothing to do

with the running
of the household,

and so on and so forth.

Dolly took care
of all of those measures.

AL: Dolly you wanna come here,
take a look at this, will you?

Anything I left out or...

DOLLY: I miss...
just a shade.

Where?
Here?

Mm-hmm,
altogether on her...

dress.

No?

Yeah.

Except she wears white,
that's so difficult to do,

I could... yeah.

I have her approval
because I have a tendency

to go overboard a lot and...

she straightens me out
every now and then,

and tells me what to--

this doesn't look like
the person

or if it's too exaggerated

or doesn't communicate.

And that's very helpful.

I listen to her very carefully.

[ Chuckling ]

[ Music playing ]

MAN: Zealous shows
to remind us of our heritage

and the fighting origin
of this nation.

The greatest production
of them all,

the audience
is highly selective.

WOMAN: ♪ We'll be singing♪

♪ Hallelujah♪

♪ Marching through Berlin♪

♪ We'll be singing♪

♪ Hallelujah♪

♪ Marching through Berlin♪

♪ Marching through... ♪

♪ Berlin...♪

[ Crowd cheering ]

[ Music playing ]

ALL:
♪ There is nothing like a dame♪

♪ Nothing in the world♪

ARTHUR:
The theater was throbbing

with glamour and excitement

every night of the week,

there was a opening
of a musical

or a play by the--

by the cream of the cream.

Rodgers and Hammerstein,
Cole Porter,

they were all there,

there was no page,

no drama page anywhere

that sparkled the way ours did.

This was the time
of Katharine Cornell,

Ethel Merman,

Helen Hayes,

of course, a Lynn Fontanne

who prided herself

on this glorious swan's neck

was delighted when Al

would draw the neck

and make it as long
as it could be,

'cause Al sometimes did offend
an actor,

and actors of-- are,

you know, they're-- some of them are primadonnas,

and they would complain
and say they wouldn't go on,

there were histrionics
and tears,

and this would be conveyed

by the producers
and the theater owners

to the publisher,
and it stopped there.

AL: I had one difficult period, I made a drawing of a dancer,

I forget his name,
it seemed to me it'd be

a reasonable drawing,

very realistic,
and they had some

kind of gaiety to it,
and movement,

and...

but he took umbrage at it

and threatened
to leave the show,

now the show
was threatening

to pull all our
advertising out,

of theTimes.

He just raised hell
about that drawing,

and...
but I must say The Times

paid no attention to it.

I feel with age

instead of becoming
more of a curmudgeon

he became more benign.

AL: As a matter of fact,
it's very difficult to offend

anybody anymore,

it's almost impossible.

I did a drawing of Merrick,
producer, David Merrick.

And not one
of my favorite characters,

and I had him as Santa Claus,

snaffletooth with a bell,
book, and candle,

and I made it
about as vicious as I could,

and Merrick bought the drawing
and used it as a Christmas card.

So,

the days of winding up
in the clink are over.

Brooks Atkinson

was the conscience

of our theatrical times,

and he wasn't going
to let anyone

change Al's tone
or his art.

Atkinson had great respect
and regard for my drawings,

as I did for his writing,

it would never occur to me
to tell him how to write,

and it never occurred to him
to tell me how to draw.

MAN: Al went to the--
to the rehearsals

to do his drawings,

and, of course, Brooks
went on the opening night.

He was totally on his own.

Hey, Morton.

Are we making a change?

Yes, Dick and Oscar
wanna move this song

out of the first act.

Now you're going to sing
it to your sister

just before our wedding.

He did the drawings
before the reviews appeared.

So he never knew

what Brooks Atkinson
was going to write.

♪ I want you♪

♪ You know who♪

People say to me, "Well,
you've seen so many shows,

can't you tell whether
it's going to be a hit or not?"

And I always tell them no,

and I have a classic story
on that,

a show opened in New Haven,
a thing called "Away We Go."

And after the show,

Lawrence Langner,
who was the co-producer,

he was at the Theater Guild,

asked me to meet him for a--

have a cup of coffee
with him in Taft's Hotel--

and so there was Billy Rose

and Mike Todd together,

and then Lawrence Langner said,

"Now, I ask you, fellas."

He's -- to level with me,
he said, "I'm tone deaf.

I don't know anything
about musicals."

And this is absolutely
bankrupting

the Theater Guild,

and "What do you fellas
think of it?"

"Do you think it has a chance?" you know.

There was a long quiet
descended on us,

and Mike Todd said,
"You want the truth, Lawrence?"

He said, "Yes."

He said,
"Well, if it was my show,

I would close it,

take your lumps, forget about it,

you know, just close it,
don't open in Boston,

you don't have a chance."

And Billy said,
"Now, wait a minute,

there's a couple tunes
in there that are not bad.

I would open it.

Rearrange the thing and so on."

I came back toThe Times

and told Brooks that I didn't
think it might be--

it might not come in, you know,

it looked like it was
going to close in New Haven.

And Ziegfeld Folly
was opening the same week,

and I went up to Boston

the following day
to do the Follies,

and I thought that was
terrible, it was just awful,

and on my way out,

the press agent for the guild

said, "Change the title
to 'Oklahoma'."

He said then,
"That's not bad."

Now, we go to that opening

and the first song in the show

was the song
that ended the first act

and now started it,

it was, "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning."

And you realized that you're in the presence of a-- of a hit,

it's unbelievable with a--

it's that kind
of trenched insanity

that takes place,

no one can predict it,

you know, no one.

♪ Everything's going my way♪

AL: I remember sitting up

until about 3:00
in the morning

with Moss Hart,
trying to talk him out

of doing "My Fair Lady".

I said, "You must be out
of your head

and try to do "Pygmalion",
which is a marvelous story,

and they just finished
the movie with Wendy Hiller,

great movie...

I said, "How are you going
to improve on that

by having somebody do a dance
or sing a song?

I mean, it's so crazy."

And he said,
"Well, I don't know.

I got a point of view about it,
and-- so that was that,

now we go to that opening,

and I said to Dolly, my wife,

"You know, if you really believe
in something,

in a musical,

you can write a musical
about an ashtray, you know."

Playwrights are made in heaven,

I mean, you cannot--

you cannot just say,
"I'm gonna write a play."

You can't drop a stitch
when you're having a good play.

Once the people go like this,
forget it, you've lost them.

AL: How on earth I got
involved in creating a play

is beyond any form
of rational thinking.

True, my collaborators
were the best in the business.

I wrote a play
with S.J. Perelman,

Vernon Duke did the music,

Ogden Nash wrote the lyrics,

Boris Aronson
designed the sets,

disaster,

absolute disaster.

The show folded
in Philadelphia,

and we had to leave
the country,

that's how S.J. Perelman and I
happen to go around the world.

We came back
about nine months later,

and all was forgiven by then.

Al should never try
to write a play,

with all due respect,

you know, shoemaker should
stick to his last,

everybody has to stick
to what they can do best.

Next to a sonnet, it's the
most difficult art form

to write a good play.

PHILIP: Almost any image we have of S.J. Perelman

the humorist and writer

comes from caricatures
that Al has done of him.

You get him
in all kinds of moods,

the observation is fabulous.

I think he was a kind of
balance wheel for Syd.

Sid would go into depression,

and then he would become
very excited,

and I've never seen Al
go very far off-course,

he's a pretty steady pilot.

[ Indistinct chatter ]

When I first joined
the drama department,

Al always was on top of
page one of the drama section.

We always thought
our competitors

a little further downtown

at theHerald Tribune
were eating their hearts out

because we had Al.

Al was ours.

[ Music playing ]

[ Car honking ]

WOMAN: Brooke's acting again.

She's a critic, for heaven's
sakes.

MAN: Hirschfeld was really a--

he always felt he stood
side by side with us,

on the other side
of the footlights.

-Yes?
-MAN: Five minutes, please.

Thank you.

Dim the curtain lights.

Curtain.

[ Applause ]

[ Music playing ]

AL: I made a lot of home movies,

and I made a film
in Siam

of a Balinese dancer,

and the Princess Poon

allowed me to photograph

two of the royal dancers.

They were sewn
into the costumes,

and I thought
this would be very helpful

to Rodgers and Hammerstein,

I know were doing a musical
about Siam,

and I called Dick Rogers,
told him about it,

and both Rodgers
and Hammerstein came here

with a set designer,

and I ran the film
off for them,

and they were
very grateful for it,

because I don't think it's ever been photographed before.

[ Music playing ]

You stay there.
I wanna see what happens

when you kneel down

and look under
Mrs. Anders' skirt.

Take it from
your bow to the king.

Yeah, but look up-- look up.
You're interested

in what's going on
under that big hoopskirt, good.

[ Music playing ]

♪ When you see a Joe♪

♪ Saving half of his dough♪

♪ You can bet, they'll be
minkin' it for some doll.♪

She makes me nervous
to see her sitting there

sucking on them pigtails.

WOMAN: Braids.

Furthermore, there's no use
our discussing

a certain party.

I ask you, sir,
what sort of word is that?

MAN:
♪ It's "aoow"♪

♪ And "gaarn" that
keep her in her place♪

♪ Not her wretched clothes♪

♪ And dirty face♪

[ Music playing ]

MAN: ♪ Boy, boy♪

♪ Crazy boy♪

♪ Stay loose, boy♪

♪ Breeze it,
buzz it, easy does it♪

♪ Turn off the juice, boy♪

Oh, that's-- oh, that's grandpa.

-Grandpa?
-That's my grandpa.

Grandpa drew that,

see that's grandpa's name,

and that's Luciano Pavarotti.

And he puts mommy's name
in here,

and grandpa's gonna tell you
where it is,

but there it is.

-AL: That's right.
-NINA: There, see.

N-I-N-A,

he's been putting my name
in his drawing

ever since I was born.

AL: Well, it started off as a very innocent little gesture.

To herald her appearance
on the Earth,

and I didn't realize
that anybody knew about it,

and when I stopped after
about two or three weeks,

letters came in,

and I discovered

in the engraving department
at the New York Times,

they were betting
on who could find the Ninas,

and then I got a letter that there ought to be some way

of identifying
how many there are

in the drawing.

So I put a number in
after my signature.

Sometimes
when Al has an exhibition,

an entire family appears

from the smallest
three-or-four year old,

to a great grandfather.

I like finding the Ninas
because it's like a puzzle

inside of a painting.

So it's always a challenge.

[ Laughing ]

♪ Nina, Nina, me,
myself and I♪

♪ Oh, how you stick with us ♪

♪ Nina, Nina, can you tell us
why you're so ubiquitous ♪

♪ It is likely you have friends
in lofty places♪

♪ For I find your name
adorning♪

♪ A famous faces♪

♪ That clothing and accessories
their friendly...♪

MAN: It's a signature,
it's a gimmick, it doesn't--

I don't feel one way
or the other about it,

in fact, I think,
if he had fewer Ninas,

people would take him
more seriously.

I think that's
part of the game,

it's like a crossword puzzle

that people look forward to.

MAN: Oh, I think you could
spot a Hirschfeld

a mile away,

and it isn't all just
because of that Nina business

that-- that's a diversion.

WOMAN: One time

Al put the name
of Nina's best girlfriend

into the drawing,

and he got so many letters,

and congratulations,
having had a second child.

But I can't stop it.

I don't know how to stop it,
but I've tried,

and the mail comes in,

and people discover Ninas,

where there aren't any,
you know,

I have to answer all that mail.

It's easier to put it in
than leave it out.

Go to Grandpa, okay?

-Where's Grandpa?
-He's in the kitchen

and ask for a little more
apple juice.

I go back a long time,

you were three years old,

and I happened to play
in London

with Yul Brynner
in theLute Song,

and you didn't like
the word "rehearsal",

it separated us, my darling,

but we caught up.

NINA:
My parents were never home,

they were always out,
and when they were home,

they'd have wonderful
dinner parties.

Everybody from Laurence Olivier to Barbra Streisand...

Louis Jourdan walked up
the stairs once,

and my best friend's name
was Liza

in high school,
and she fainted.

You know, just by being
my father's daughter,

and all the opportunities
that I feel I've had,

you know, I wanted
to be an actress

at one point in my life.

DOLLY: And she was well
on her way, but no.

Maybe her admiration
for Al's work

was such...

unbelievable attraction.

NINA: But people used to come
up to me, and they go,

"Oh, you're the Nina?"

And I'd go, "Yeah. Yeah."

[ Playing piano ]

DOLLY: No, I don't--

I don't think
it made Nina happy.

It's very, very difficult,

still is difficult at times.

The question
that I try to avoid,

she doesn't like it,
I don't think.

Because it's--
she's become a...

celebrity without having

done anything to accomplish it,
you know what I mean?

People say,
"Oh, you're the Nina?"

And that's very tough
to take, you know.

She's been taking that now
for 40 years,

and that's a--

but there's no way to stop it.

NINA: It's actually

been the happiest times
of my life,

because I have tried to do
all kinds of things on my own,

and the only things
I've ever really done

were have two children,

which is quite
an accomplishment.

Every time I've tried
to be independent,

I always wind up
coming back here,

which is very odd.

Most people wanna be
on their own no matter what,

and no matter where I go,

I always wind up
coming back here.

I've been looking
for my daddy all my life.

[ Laughing ]

I wish somebody
could answer that for me.

[ Music playing ]

Why do I say that?

Because I've never met
the right person.

Nobody's ever measured up.

I did-- I never married
the right person.

♪ Mr. Henkel♪

♪ This is Harvey Johnson♪

♪ Can I speak♪

♪ To Penelope Ann?♪

PENELOPE:
♪ Is it true about Kim?♪

♪ Penelope?♪

PENELOPE:
♪ I just knew it somehow♪

MAN: ♪ About the prom♪

PENELOPE:
♪ I must call her right up♪

♪ I can't talk to you now!♪

Good girl.

[ Screaming ]

O, that this too too
solid flesh would melt, thaw,

and resolve itself into a dew.

MAN: ♪ Whoa♪

♪ Lord♪

♪ I'm on my way♪

CHOIR: ♪ I'm on my way♪

♪ To a Heavenly Lan'♪

MAN: ♪ If I were a rich man♪

♪ You will boo, boo, boo, boo♪

♪ Will you voo, voo, voo, voo, voo, voo, voo, voo, voo, voom
♪

♪ All day long I'd
vi , vi, vi, voom ♪

♪ If I were a wealthy man♪

[ Thunder clapping ]

Everybody has to make jumps

when you come
from one generation,

and he was moving
into this generation,

even though it was several
years already that the hippies

were all over the place around
here, down the village, and--

CHOIR: ♪ The age of Aquarius♪

♪ The age of Aquarius♪

♪ Aquarius...♪

♪ Aquarius♪

One trouble with Al's career

was that there was a period
whenThe Times decided

to use photographs.

There wasn't this
unbroken line.

I remember Sid Perelman,

who was a great friend
of Al Hirschfeld...

Al did a lot of drawings
for Sid's humorous books,

and he said,
"Can't we do something?

I mean, Al isn't appearing
in The Times every week."

Of course, he was right.

I think because people
didn't see his drawings

for a while,
they sort of lost touch

with what Al is
and what he can do.

We used to get letters
by the hundreds where,

"What happened
to Al Hirschfeld?"

Because, you know, for a while,
he was fired from the job.

And Mr. Atkins is saying,

"I mean, what is wrong with him?

Where's the-- there--?

He lost his senses
or something."

[ Percussion music ]

I really wasn't fired.

I don't know
what the reason was,

I don't--

I think a lot of people wrote in
and wanted to see the drawings

and so they...

started asking me to do
drawings again.

I never had any...

iron-bound contract
with The Times,

and-- about two years ago, they asked me to sign a contract,

and I said,
"You must be kidding.

I mean, after all these years?"

After 70 years,
they wanted a contract,

and I signed it last year.

It's kind of insanity.

[ Car honks ]

AL: Way back,
some 30 years ago,

my gallery was the
Hammer Gallery on 57th Street,

one of the artists
was Ludwig Bemelmans.

When either of us
exhibited our work there,

it was as if we were
stalking horses,

we would attract crowds
to come into the gallery,

and then the gallery would push the expensive pictures.

Ours were selling
for hundreds,

the others were selling
for hundreds of thousands.

A change was in order.

Well, almost 20 years ago,

he came to the gallery,

and he saw this photograph,

and I said "Yes, that's me.
I fly airplanes."

He went like this, and he said,

"Any woman
who can fly an airplane

can sell my art."

He's done 10--
perhaps 12,000 drawings.

Almost every museum
in this country

and around the world
has a Hirschfeld.

Even the United States
Postal Service

has issued postage stamps
of Hirschfeld drawings.

AL: I did the comedians,
and last year I did...

silent movie stars.

DOLLY:
It's completely unpredictable,

the way Al creates.

And it is almost impossible
to describe a drawing

can be ready in...

in a couple of hours.

At times it happens
that he takes three days

in desperation.

He cannot get the essence
of a human being

that he has
in his head.

Erase this whole thing.

DOLLY: He would tear it up
because it isn't right.

AL: I had a terrible time
with Gary Moore.

Took the drawing downstairs
and showed it to Dolly,

and I said, "Who is that?"

She said Buster Keaton.

Well, he came up,
and I worked at this thing,

and I must have
made a thousand--

I was about to phone and say,
"Listen, I can't do it."

And then years later,
I met Gary Moore,

I told him the difficulty
I had with him,

and he said, "That's very odd."

He said,
"Because as a young man,

I used to do
Buster Keaton imitations."

You live long enough,
everything happens, you know.

The problem
is to avoid stereotypes,

not to get stuck, bored, or mentally constipated.

Allen Funt of TV's
Candid Camera

bitterly complained
about my drawing of him,

and though I did another,
as fate would have it,

the first one he disliked
got published.

And he said that I made him
look like an ape

in that original drawing,

and I said I had nothing to do
with that, that was God's work,

and that was the end of that.

[ Chuckling ]

I'm here at this drawing
board at around,

I don't know,
I'd say 10:00, 10:30,

and I stay here
until the sun goes down.

He works seven days a week,
goes to his studio

at 10:00 in the morning,

he eats lunch at noon,

he's back in the studio
at a quarter to 1:00.

At 4:00 o'clock,

there's a knock on the door,
and it's tea and cookies,

and he works until 5:30.

Hawking away and drawing
and drawing and then,

something happens,
it's a kind of magic

that takes place
when the lines communicate

to the viewer

what you're seeing.

It's not anatomy.

It's a, it's a...

a whole business of how

one recognizes another person.

I suppose it's a combination
of many things,

the way they walk,
stand, move, and so on.

That's my contribution, I mean,

everybody has the ability
to recognize someone.

But they don't all have
the ability to communicate

that recognition
through prose or through a line

to someone else.

MAN: ♪ C'est moi, c'est moi♪

♪ I'm forced to admit♪

♪ 'Tis I, I humbly reply♪

♪ That mortal
who these marvels can do♪

♪ C'est moi, c'est moi, 'tis I♪

♪♪

You're the worst driver
I've ever seen in my life,

let's go any place,
the worst, Europe,

in any place, Asia.

-DIANE: Yeah.
-WOODY: And I love

-what you're wearing.
-DIANE: Oh, you do? Yeah?

[ Sighing ]

DOLLY: Go alone for a minute.

Please, for once, you--
sometimes go without me.

MARIA: He is not a lonely man,

he is an alone man.

He works alone.

He-- his art requires him
to be an alone man,

a solitary figure.

[ Music playing ]

PHILIP: He will get many times

60 people into one drawing.

His intellect is such
that he can compress

onto a small piece of paper

an enormous event.

I think you know his--
his intellectual capacity

through the memory of his work.

JOSEPH: But I remember
he was sitting there one time,

and he's trying to sketch,
and it starts to rain,

and he starts to cover up this,

there's a drop over here,
he covers up that,

he's still working away, and he covers his thing,

so I had some of the people
get an umbrella around him,

but by that time
we're all off the stage,

and he was doing it from memory.

You had to be very concentrated

to gather the gist of the show,

in addition to what maybe

even the authors intended.

He very often got what they
didn't know they had gotten.

I give you truth

in the pleasant disguise
of illusion.

STEFAN: Tennessee Williams
were to make a statement

about the futility of love.

He would catch that, but Al
would not make a statement,

he would translate
that statement

made by Williams

or if Arthur Miller
showed a broken man

who was once a salesman

and is now out of work
and deflated,

he would deflate him
on that page,

but he would not invent the man to deflate.

Why, why, that question
has been trailing me

like a ghost
for the last 15 years.

But you have to be caught up
in the emotion of the play,

and it's below
the surface of the play.

So it's more
than just a description

of the-- of an individual,

but it sort of encompasses
everything we do.

I was fascinated when I met him

because I think his whole body

has all the spring and delight

and electricity

that his drawings have.

And we tried to
get him up here,

I don't know, to do something

in connection
with this particular movie.

I think I'm rather easier
than some.

I got exaggerated, sort of,

nostrils...
and the mouth goes down,

you know, and cheeks go hollow.

He'll sometimes say
that somebody's eyes

are like fried eggs.

Mouths become pee holes,

caverns, slits.

Hair might be Brillo,

rope, string, thread.

When he wrote about
Zero Mostel that he was like

a bundle of dirty laundry,
you immediately see Zero.

You can just him
on the stage as Tevye.

Streisand is not a
homely woman,

but she is this kind
of tropical bird

that he's made a note about.

Well, I'd like to draw people

who've kind
of invented themselves.

They're like
exploded ventricles.

The Carol Channings,
Zero Mostels,

Orson Welles.

If you're looking
for a beauty shot, forget it,

he's not going
to make you beautiful.

He'll make you interesting
but never beautiful.

Al did a caricature of me
when I was inOn Your Toes,

and I looked at it and thought,

I wonder
if he really doesn't like me,

I just wondered
why he made me look

quite so unattractive.

Caricature is one thing,

but this abused the privilege.

[ Laughing ]

And it's not unflattering,
really.

I'd like to look like that.

It makes us flattering
even to be observed.

You know, say anything you want about me, but say something.

Certain faces
lend themselves to...

well, I can say,
the ridiculous caricature.

I think that Spencer was more
difficult to do than Bogie.

"The African Queen" one
is brilliant.

"The Abortion Queen,"
they call it now.

[ Laughing ]

Well, is that terrible?

Well, he is remarkable,

he runs up the stairs,

he runs down the stairs,
does he still?

I don't exercise,

except going up
and down the stairs

in my house.

I don't play golf.

I don't swim.

I never saw him
lift anything heavier

than a coffee cup
or a drawing pen.

He was almost
totally sedentary.

I had been
in the country with him,

I never saw him exercise,

not even swim.

[ Tapping ]

[ Music playing ]

Well, I've done movies

in the early 20s up until now,

TV,

all of the performing arts,

philharmonic, opera,

the theater, of course.

How am I ever going
to play for the Yankees

with a name
like Eugene Morris Jerome?

You got to be a
Tony or Frankie.

When you think of

theatrical
caricatures, certainly,

you don't think
of Hirschfeld among others,

you think of Hirschfeld,
and I always remember thinking

that if you can only get
from Philadelphia,

where I was growing up,
to New York,

everybody would look
like a Hirschfeld.

[ Music playing ]

MAN: ♪ Love me♪

♪ That's all♪

♪ I ask♪

♪ Of you♪

A few years ago I was
assigned of to do a drawing

on Eugene O'Neill's

Long Day's Journey into Night.

The caricature
is crappy, I just got it,

and this guy fit me
with new noses today,

I got all sorts
of different faces he handed me.

And I say, "What is that
guy doing?" And who is that?

God, I look like
The Wandering Jew.

When Al draws my face,

he's very concentrated
on the jaw.

[ Laughing ]

I said something
about that the other day

to the fellas in the cast,

I said, "Do you think my jaw
is like that?"

And everybody turned
to me and went...

[ Laughing ]

I try to get a new
interpretation each time.

I looked up my old drawings,

on the original one
with Freddie March

and Florence Eldridge,

and Jason Robards.

[ Music playing ]

Detail of the table
is driving me crazy.

[ Chuckling ]

Sometimes it's--

goes very quickly

and other times
it's-- you just produce

an ulcer, that's all.

There was a professor,
an old dean,

in the University
of Pennsylvania

who got himself a $60,000 grant

from the Pentagon

to research the Ninas
in my drawings.

DR. CALVIN: Hirschfeld's
a master of camouflage

in the way he hides
a "Nina" in the scenes

that he creates.

What we're trying to do
is understand

how people detect targets

when they are camouflaged
in scenery.

AL: Student pilots pick out
the Ninas in the drawing,

because it helps them
in reading maps.

It's used for bombing.

[ Laughing ]

I said, "Sheer
insanity, absolutely."

[ Explosion ]

[ Gunfire ]

[ Music playing ]

ERIC: Hirschfeld really manages
to capture the spirit

of a-- of a pose

in a very simplified
and elegant way.

I was the first supervising
animator on Aladdin.

So I thought who better to turn
to than Hirschfeld

for good, simplified, shape

that you could
kind of stretch around

and mangle,
and twist, and turn,

you know, with the great deal
of elasticity

and also simplicity.

AL: The Disney Company said
that I had this great effect

on the designing ofAladdin,

that the Genie
who comes out of the bottle

was inspired by my drawings
of just pure line.

Al was not aware of any of this
while we were making the movie.

AL: Oh, I was not aware of this
until I went out there.

ERIC: It was like the
arrival of the patron saint,

there was this crew
of 600 artists

who just spent the last year, you know, looking at Al's work.

-MAN: This is Al Hirschfeld.
-Hello.

Oh.

I recognize that immediately.

ERIC: I mean, you can see
I've even used a little bit

of a Hirschfeld curly cue here

in the way
these fingers are defined.

AL: I suppose everybody
has their own kind

of thumbprint, you know.

ERIC: If you take
a good Hirschfeld drawing,

what isn't
a good Hirschfeld drawing,

but if you take
any Hirschfeld drawing,

and you see the way
that these lines lean

in such a supple way
around the form,

you know to define
what the silhouette is,

I mean you can see
the same kind of supple

leading from, you know,

down the back
around the shoe,

the same kind of form,

which Freddie Moore
gave Mickey in 1941.

One thing that animators
always look for

is a-- is a kind of clarity

to the silhouette
of the character

that they're working on.

And since the Genie
had to chain

from one character
to the next,

that clarity was essential.

You had to be able to get it,

you know, in a split second
and move on.

There've been lots
of artists in the past

who have influenced the look
of a Disney movie.

So I would say
Mr. Hirschfeld, you know,

whether he knew it or not,

joined the ranks
of many of those.

AL: I think the whole trick
in art is to stay alive.

A young artist came up to me,

and I don't know
where to send them.

I mean, there's no crying need
for caricature

at the moment, it's a lemming
profession, it seems to me.

I try to discourage them
the best I can,

not because
they don't have talents,

I mean, their gifts, they have, of course,

but, I tell you, that talent is a drug on the market,

really it is.

And my only respect is
for the capacity for work.

I've always said that
if you want to make a living,

open a delicatessen, you know,

but art is no way to do it.

♪ Never, never be an artist♪

♪ If you think
you can make one cent♪

♪ Never, never be an artist♪

♪ If there's no one
to pay your rent♪

Stuck.

♪ Never, never be an artist♪

♪ Unless you want to have
a marvelous time♪

♪ Unless you want to have
a marvelous time♪

AL: Well, I've been
described everything

from a Messiah
to a boulevardier

to a rabbi.

We are here in the Algonquin,

the perfect place
to celebrate Al Hirschfeld,

and he has
his own round table.

It's a very sentimental thing
to be here.

MAN: Dearly beloved...

[ Laughing ]

We're gathered here
in the sight of God and man.

I'm the man,

and Al is the god.

[ Laughing ]

Pagan god,
appropriately bearded.

Let us imagine him as Zeus

with Dolly as his Hera,

a god armed
with pens and pencils

instead of thunderbolts,

in order to keep proper care

of an unruly world.

KATHARINE:
It's a wonderful comment,

on the curious trip

that civilization
seems to be taking.

What's happened
to Hirschfeld is

through the years,
I mean, this guy's in his 90s,

and he-- he's like

Tolstoy and Verdi,

and Picasso,
whose productions

got leaner,
and leaner, and leaner.

I mean, Picasso eventually
began to caricature himself,

but the others
really burned away

all that was inessential

and left with this
very refined art.

And there's one line
that you can remove

without destroying
the composition,

now he's gotten it down
to that point.

Well, when my wife died, Dolly,

a remarkable lady, by the way...

Well, I haven't made peace
with that,

I don't suppose
I ever will, I'm furious.

But I've adjusted to it
as best I can and...

because there's nothing
I can do about it.

She always set this absolutely gorgeous table.

And almost
a dramatic theatrical table

with red glasses

and flowers at each place.

A stage setting,

a theatrical dining room,
in many ways.

And when she died,
and Al started inviting people

to come to dinner again,

it was exactly the same,

he kept it, the table,

the only thing missing
was Dolly.

MARIA: I think the fact
that he was able to work

after her death was because
she had already given him

how to handle her death.

She had given him
the right not to feel guilty.

And so it's a great gift.

AL: My adjustment
seems to startle people,

and thus,
doesn't seem to be normal.

I don't know why
it struck-- strikes me

as being completely normal.

[ Record playing ]

I remember reading
as an article some years ago

about longevity, and there was
an interview with Shaw

and they had asked him
to what he attributed

his longevity, and he said,

"Well, I never drank,
I never ate meat,

I'm a vegetarian."

And he said,
"I assume that's it."

He said-- and that
sounded reasonable.

Then I read sometime later
an interview with Churchill.

They asked him to what
he attributed his longevity,

and he said, "Well, I smoke
about 10 cigars a day,

I drink a quart of brandy,

and I eat nothing but red meat."

[ Horns honking ]

I had my license
renewed recently.

It's so ridiculous.

I couldn't see the eye chart,
but got the license anyway.

I'm no good at being alone,
you know.

After Dolly died, of course,
I kept going to the theater.

And often I had company.

Well, I guess it's the theatre
that we... we've had in common.

My late husband and I
were friends of Al and Dolly's

for over 30 years.

Where are we going tonight?

You got to be kidding me.

[ Indistinct chatter ]

You have the tickets?

-Do you have the tickets?
-No.

LOUISE: Where do we get them?

[ Indistinct chatter ]

LOUISE: It's unbelievable
that we're so close now.

When I was playing a character,

everything about that character

came clearly
through the drawing.

This is the first Dolly.

That was when I was nice
and healthy and plump.

Look, he dropped 20 pounds off me

because I was thinking
I was thin.

[ Indistinct chatter ]

Oh, Al.

I must tell you
Al Hirschfeld first did,

he picked me out
of one of 20 unknowns

in a little revue
called Lend An Ear.

And he put me on the front page

of theNew York Times,

and that was the beginning
of me.

[ Laughing ]

There's something
about the continuity,

the unchanging virtuosity

of Hirschfeld's style,

that seems to fit
the style of Broadway

as it evolved
over the 20th Century.

WOMAN:
♪ Yes, everything's as if♪

♪ We never said good-bye♪

It's probably
the most exciting opening night

that I have ever been to.

[ Car honking ]

BACALL:
There's nobody like you, Al.

AL:
Well, thank you.

BACALL:
Never has been, never will be.

You're a national treasure.

-No, you are.
-You are.

No, you are
a national treasure--

come on and face it.

Relax and enjoy it,
you've earned it.

It's incredible.

Well, it's almost impossible
to control the way--

It's so crazy, I can't--

Well, in one lifetime
to have the automobile,

the radio, the television,

and now the Internet.

And this CD-ROM thing
is just too much

for one human being to absorb.

Well, it's like
discovering paint, you know.

And the cave drawings
of Altamira,

you know, up to this
is quite a jump.

But I suppose
it is possible to control it.

It just requires another
lifetime to do it, that's all.

Living is an art,
it's not a science, you know.

You make it up as you go along.

And I think
that's what it's all about.

[ Birds chirping ]

I look forward
to the future, actually.

I don't dwell
on the past at all.

Although I've been yapping away

for all this time
about the past,

but that is normal
for me, really.

I look back
and ought to be 90 again.

[ Music playing ]

BARBRA: ♪ Look at that face♪

♪ Just look at it♪

♪ Look at that fabulous face
of yours♪

♪ I knew first look
I took at it♪

♪ This was the face♪

♪ That the world adores♪

♪ Look at those eyes as wise♪

♪ And as deep as the sea♪

♪ Look at that nose♪

♪ It shows what a nose♪

♪ Should be♪

♪ As for your smile,
it's lyrical♪

♪ Friendly and warm
as a summer's day♪

♪ Your face is just a miracle♪

♪ Where could I ever find♪

♪ Words to say?♪

♪ The way
that it makes me happy♪

♪ Whatever the time or place♪

♪ I will find in no book♪

♪ What I find♪

♪ When I look♪

♪ At that face♪

♪ There's no business
like show business♪

♪ Like no business I know♪

♪ Everything about it
is appealing♪

♪ Everything the traffic
will allow♪

♪ Nowhere could you get
that happy feeling♪

♪ When you are stealing
that extra bow♪

♪ There's no people
like show people♪

♪ They smile when they are low♪

♪ Yesterday they told you
you would not go far♪

♪ That night you opened
and there you are♪

♪ Next day
on your dressing room♪

♪ They hung a star♪

♪ Let's go on with the show♪

♪ The costumes,
the scenery♪

♪ The makeup, the props♪

♪ The audience that lifts you
when you're down♪

♪ The headaches,
the heartaches♪

♪ The backaches, the flops♪

♪ The sheriff who escorts you
out of town♪

♪ The opening when
your heart beats like a drum♪

♪ The closing when
the customers won't come♪

♪ There's no business
like show business♪

♪ Like no business I know♪

♪ You get word
before the show has started♪

♪ That your favorite uncle
died at dawn♪

♪ Top of that,
your ma and pa had parted♪

♪ You're brokenhearted♪

♪ But you go on♪

♪ There's no people
like show people♪

♪ They don't run out of dough♪

♪ Angels come from
everywhere with lots of jack♪

♪ And when you lose it,
there's no attack♪

♪ Where could you get money♪

♪ That you don't get back?♪

♪ Let's go on with the show♪

♪ There's no business
like show business♪

♪ If you tell me it's so♪

♪ Traveling through
the country is so thrilling♪

♪ Standing out in front
on opening nights♪

♪ Smiling as you watch
the benches filling♪

♪ And see your billing
out there in lights♪

♪ There's no people
like show people♪

♪ They smile when they are low♪

♪ Even with a turkey
that you know will fold♪

♪ You may be stranded out
in the cold♪

♪ Still you wouldn't change it
for a sack of gold♪

♪ Let's go on with the show♪

♪ Let's go on with the show♪